Posted on 08/28/2006 6:31:13 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
It can be an agent of artificial selection, sure. It doesn't have to be, though. If one starts a war with the intent that those who survive will be stronger and, therefore, those soldiers' children will be stronger yet, and so on... then, yes, it is artificial selection.
Dude, the Declarations of Secession which you dismiss weren't published until 1861.
Yup -- you got me on the timeline there.
If you somehow managed to skim over the ubiquitous implication of white, european superiority in "Descent Of Man," I'm not certain there is any other context that you might find helpful, Junior.
FACTS?? Are you talking about that tree with so many missing links it's a wonder that the trunk is still standing. I guess it's your "theory god" that is keeping it up.
And I can guarrantee "evolution" was not on the minds of the secessionists.
Maybe Old Abe got a pre-print.
--R.
My, you get awfully nasty when people ask you for evidence.
No. You made a statement that has no support. Either back it up or be shown to be the know-nothing you're coming across as.
Here, I'll help you.
Human RacesThe questions of what "race" was, how many human races there were, and whether they could be "mixed", were key debates in the nascent field of anthropology in Darwin's time. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), the question of race and slavery were brought to the forefront in anthropology in the United States and Europe. Many scientists from the Southern U.S. were publishing long monographs on why the "Negro" was inferior and would soon be driven to extinction by newfound freedom, with an implication that slavery had been not only "beneficial" but "natural". Darwin was a long-time abolitionist who had been horrified by slavery when he first came into contact with it in Brazil while touring the world on the Beagle voyage many years before, and considered the "race question" one of the most important of his day. Darwin took a radical view for his time—that all human beings were of the same species, and that races, if they were useful markers at all, were simply "sub-species" or "variants." This view (known as "monogenism") was in stark contrast with the majority view in anthropology at the time, that the different human races were distinct species ("polygenism") and were likely separately "created". Polygeny was supported by thinkers of many backgrounds, such as the zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist Louis Agassiz, and by later thinkers who would interpret Darwin's theory to imply that races had been evolved at different times or stages. Darwin's own views of this were that the differences between human races were superficial (he discusses them only in terms of skin color and hair style), and much of Descent is devoted to the question of the human races. Aside from the aforementioned encounter with slavery on the Beagle, Darwin also was perplexed by the "savage races" he saw in South America at Tierra del Fuego, which he saw as evidence of a man's more primitive state of civilization. During his years in London, his private notebooks were riddled with speculations and thoughts on the nature of the human races, many decades before he would publish Origin.
OK, there's one line in "Origin" that foreshadows "Descent," as follows:
"light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
This still does not demonstrate that the word "races" in the title of Darwin's first book means what EternalVigilance has implied that it means.
Not even as a justification?
LOL! Touche.
Darwinism is the most efficient fuel for the genocide machine ever to be sucked from the black hearts of vile men.
FACTS??
Yes, facts.
We are talking about science, after all.
That creationists get so testy about being asked for facts tells us much about the courage of their convictions.
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
- Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man
It does, however, make the claim that there is no reference to human beings in "Origin" specious, though.
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God" [pantokrat], or "Universal Ruler." The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect."
"Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors."
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